HMY > Lessons from Mary Poppins: The Order of Products in Retail is Important

Lessons from Mary Poppins: The Order of Products in Retail is Important

Order has always been one of the most important things for almost everything in life. Furthermore, any technique for organization and productivity that you are currently applying for your business has one basic premise: order.

Without order, there is no productivity.

Without order, objectives are not met.

Apply this when you want to complete any challenge.

With a Spoonful of Sugar…

Throughout the movie, Mary Poppins shows the children the importance of order in their rooms. Even though a creative mind tends to be cluttered, in our retail businesses, we cannot afford that luxury. First, because the impression that we create for the client will not be desirable, and second, because we should not place products on shelves without being sure that place is the ideal one for our product.

Could Mary Poppins have been the pioneer for this type of marketing strategy?

Obviously not, but she may have helped more than one person to get the idea.

Yes, we are facing a big challenge: how to improve sales for your business by applying some advice about where to place your featured products and where to place those you are not interested in selling.

Assuming that you are offering something that you do not want to sell. Yes, you read that correctly. More than one retailer sells things that they disagree with. But this is not the issue.

We’ll stop with the jokes.

The order of the products in a store influences how your clients perceive each product that you sell. That’s why, in addition to knowing where to place products, it is important that you know something about how they are influenced by them.

So, as Mary Poppins taught us in the movie, we will see how order and organization affect the life of our business. And how to achieve these two objectives: increasing sales and saving employee efforts.

Order: A Retail Sector Basic

The order and product placement in a store is basic. Normally, they were determined by hot or cold zones. But settle down, the hot zones don’t have anything to do with what you’re thinking; there aren’t any bakeries or hot take-out food.

Hot zones are those where customers roam, aimlessly trying to find the products they need. There are perfectly designed to give a small boost to those products that are not sold as easily or those which you would like to promote.

It makes sense, right?

The cold zones aren’t air-conditioned zones either. Far from it. These zones have bad locations, however, that is where your clients can find all of the products that everyone buys. They are the ideal place for basic products that all of your clients need. For example, if you are in a supermarket, it is logical to “hide” the place where the milk is located in order for clients to see more products and to increase our possibilities of sales.

A Shelf Can Become Magical

A shelf can completely change the way that the client receives in their subconscious a product that we want to sell them.

Now think, where do we present our products?

Indeed, on the shelves.

So if we want to change our client’s perception of a product, we must innovate in the way that it is presented. Therefore, innovation, plus the topic of different zones, resides in where it is presented. That is where the true innovation is.

For example, at HMY we have developed an extra-thin shelf that is specially designed so that each shelf is strategically placed at the client’s eye level. The perfect height with the perfect width so you can place the same amount of product as you could with a conventional shelf, but saving space. It seems like magic, right?

Now, all of this, plus the possibility that they don’t make noise and knowing that your shelves are reinforced.

Not bad, right?

The solution to increasing sales is found in the small details. And, above all, in the innovation and reinvention of elements as traditional for all of us as a shelf.

So, get down to business, put yourself in your client’s shoes to find out what they would do and innovate in the simple things to save time, costs, and to increase sales.

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